We get glimpses into Cruz’s past-time in the Marines, flashes of hive sequences, therapy sessions-but much of Alien #1 is spent in an unusually familiar present. Johnson, who is also writing Superman and Action Comics at DC, introduces us to a new lead character: Gabriel Cruz, retiring Security Chief of a Weyland-Yutani installation called Epsilon Station. It’s an opportunity to say “this is what these characters are about, to me.” And with writer/ Alien superfan (seriously, check out his recent PO interview) Phillip Kennedy Johnson at the helm, we find out early on that darkness-the kind of darkness beyond the absence of light, the sort of darkness we sometimes feel tugging at the edges of a nightmare-is key to this new series. A story, we’re told in the opening panels, about darkness.Īny good comic writer knows you don’t get a second chance at a first issue. A story that feels familiar and yet distinctly new. A future without 20th Century Fox, without Dark Horse, without Ripley-without a lot of the things we think of when we think “ Alien.”īut for all the big things this represents, at the end of the day it’s also something quite small: a single issue of a new comic series, featuring xenomorphs and facehuggers and Weyland-Yutani. In terms of the film industry, this is the first tangible product of Disney’s acquisition of the Alien IP (which became official in March of 2019).Īnd in terms of fandom, this is a huge step into a new future.

In terms of comics, this is the first official non-Dark Horse Alien book in this format since Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson’s Alien: The Illustrated Story in 1979. It’s hard to overstate how significant Alien #1 is no matter how you look at it, it represents something big.

Alien the illustrated story 1979